Sonnets from the Portuguese, 35

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Teacher card

Published: 1850, in Sonnets from the Portuguese
Length: 14 lines, 125 words, 1 word in 125 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: love, wedding
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchangeAnd be all to me? Shall I never missHome-talk and blessing and the common kissThat comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,When I look up, to drop on a new rangeOf walls and floors, another home than this?Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which isFilled by dead eyes too tender to know changeThat’s hardest. If to conquer love, has tried,To conquer grief, tries more, as all things prove,For grief indeed is love and grief beside.Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.Yet love me—wilt thou? Open thy heart wide,And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (died 1861), Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), lines 826–839 of Project Gutenberg ebook #2002. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for names in posy cardsin posy · 14 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
posy.popplepoetry.com/sources#bb-35

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/browning-sonnets-from-the-portuguese-35 · popplepoetry.com